I was checking out some new (to me) webcomics during a break at work. I found myself at an apparently dead webcomic with the URL "dord.horse". The domain appears to be abandoned, but the URL was intriguing enough to get me to look up whatever it used to be there. I found the following permalinks on the internet archive. (It seems the site was intended to be read from bottom to top, and these links seem to represent chronologically adjacent comic pages).

https://perma.cc/D5EB-24WC
https://perma.cc/GX4S-6FMR
https://perma.cc/NH5E-JY5H

The webcomic is about two solar-power-generating satellites in a huge network. The satelites have gained, or "were given" sentience by "the makers", and so they kill time with conversation. Occasionally in the conversation, the satellites talk about their theories about what happened to the makers. A part of the conversation which I found particularly interesting was where one of the satellites proposes that the makers upgraded their consciousness continually until they transcended reality, "bootstrap[ing] themselves to godhood". The satellite continues to suggest that, perhaps the dull existence of the satellites is a test, and that if a satellite behaves well then the makers will upgrade the satellite's consciousness into the same postreality that the makers have achieved. The second satellite responds with, "Didn't the makers used to have a word for believing in an untestable hypothesis?"

The first word that came to my mind on reading that was, "religion". That's a word that might be used to describe belief in an untestable hypothesis. I think the comic does an interesting job of making such beliefs appear silly, but there's an irony in it and I can't tell if the author included this intentionally or not. The satellites proceed with all their conversations about the makers on the hitherto unproven assumption that the makers existed. It seems like a natural assumption for satellites to make, because they represent a rather complex arrangement of metals and minerals, and the reader knows that arrangements such as those do not appear naturally. They have inexplicable memories of the activities of the long-gone makers, but in other comics they express that the memories are unreliable, and may have been imagined. There's no reason offered for their assumption that the makers existed.

If we found a set of satellites such as these, orbiting a planet, we would immediately assume that they were built by a higher species. In the same way, if Neil Armstrong found a Rolex watch on the moon, the natural assumption would be that Neil was not the first man on the moon.

Only, consider our actual experiences, in real life. We have explored a planet in space. And we didn't just find a Rolex watch or a group of sentient satellites. We found a group of sentient factories, which produce more factories like themselves, which in turn produce Rolex watches and satellites alike. We found something much more complex on that planet than the machines depicted in that comic. And rather than assuming that it was built there by a higher species, we assumed that the particles forming these great machines just fell into place randomly, by accident. And we berate and mock anyone who supposes otherwise.

We, ourselves, are the factories producing more like ourselves, and we discovered others like us on our own planet. It's imminently ridiculous to ignore the possibility that we were put here by an intelligent designer, or to bar people from academic discussion who consider the available evidence about our origins with the possibility of our own intelligent design as a premise.

...But I'll stop there before I get too carried away. If I go much further then I think I will have to discuss the nature of a proof, and why a belief in God is prerequisite for provability in general, and discussing that will require me to dive into the same epistemological topics which I have already discussed ad nauseam in prior posts on this blog. On the topic of espistemological methods, though, my quote today is from the end of book 5 of The Republic (I offer the conclusion here -- read the rest of The Republic to get the argument). I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Plato for, at length, demonstrating the ridiculousness of the the many arguments I've thus-far heard from atheist 'philosophers' about epistemology. Here Socrates is discussing a related topic with Glaucon.

"
[Socrates]Yes; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind which we might find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of knowledge; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by the intermediate faculty.

[Glaucon]Quite true.

Then those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the way thither; who see the many just, and not absolute justice, and the like,–such persons may be said to have opinion but not knowledge?

That is certain.

But those who see the absolute and eternal and immutable may be said to know, and not to have opinion only?

Neither can that be denied.

The one love and embrace the subjects of knowledge, the other those of opinion? The latter are the same, as I dare say you will remember, who listened to sweet sounds and gazed upon fair colours, but would not tolerate the existence of absolute beauty.

Yes, I remember.

Shall we then be guilty of any impropriety in calling them lovers of opinion rather than lovers of wisdom, and will they be very angry with us for thus describing them?

I shall tell them not to be angry; no man should be angry at what is true.

But those who love the truth in each thing are to be called lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion.

Assuredly

And thus, Glaucon, after the argument has gone a weary way, the true and the false philosophers have at length appeared in view.

I do not think, he said, that the way could have been shortened.
"